Posts Tagged ‘earthquakes’

This map of Cleveland shows six concentric circles, which the city’s mayor wants to reduce to a more manageable three by 2016.

CLEVELAND – With the east coast still in the grips of an 800-mile-wide Frankenstorm, our nation was dealt a further blow tonight when Cleveland, Ohio suffered a Dracuquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale. The extent of the damage is not yet known, but authorities are hoping the quake will be killed when the sun rises tomorrow morning.

At a televised press conference that concluded a short time ago, Cleveland mayor Jonathan Harker implored residents to stay out of damaged buildings and to wait calmly for Red Cross personnel to deliver “food, blankets, water, and garlic.”

It is not known what effect a red cross with arms of equal length will have on the Dracuquake.

Harker also advised Clevelanders to tune into The Weather Channel for further updates. “I know this is more of a geological event than a metrological one,” the mayor said, “but I get kickbacks every time I mention them and need money for attack ads.”

“A Dracuquake is too weather,” she said. “If it happens outside, it’s weather. Well, a football game isn’t weather I suppose, but we’re not a sports channel, so I can’t comment on that.”

When asked for a response both to the mayor’s comments and Drench’s subsequent response, meteorologist and frequent Anvil contributor Pinky Middleton said he didn’t know why those who study weather are called meteorologists.

“I got into this [expletive deleted] to look at space rocks,” he explained. “Excuse me for using logic. I guess I should have signed up for ‘cloudology.’ I’d probably be on my way to the asteroid belt right now with a fat NASA paycheck, a badass spacesuit, and more chicks than I can handle.”

Middleton did warn east coasters to be on the lookout for Were-nados, which are often spawned by Frankenstorms.

“Those things can get pretty hairy,” he said.

In other natural disaster-related news, scientists in Washington State are currently monitoring seismic activity at Mount St. Helens, site of a massive explosion in 1980 that destroyed hundreds of homes and leveled miles of forest. No one from the Weather Channel was willing to comment, but sources say experts fear a Creature From the Black Lagooncanic eruption on the magnitude of the Mount Pinatubo blast that rocked the Philippines in 1991.

FACEBOOK – FarmVille, the world’s most populous city, was struck by a devastating earthquake this afternoon measuring 11.9 on the Richter scale. Early reports estimate the death toll at twenty million, plus their friends, though that number is expected to rise.

Seismologists say the quake occurred at 4:50 p.m. EST, sending thousands of cows and pigs hurtling though the air and crushing their owners to death. Many others were swallowed up by churning blue soil. If the current victim count is accurate, the disaster will go on record as the deadliest in human history.

Donations are already pouring in from around the world, led by Facebook users who spend most of their time in FarmVille.

“I’ve been out of work for a year,” says Roweena Hotpepper, a long-time Facebook member, “but I sent my whole unemployment check. Those poor people need that money more than I do.”

Pinky Middleton, no stranger to unnatural disasters, said he plans to head to FarmVille tomorrow to help with the relief effort. “I was in Myspace when it got hit by the Exodus,” he says. “It’s a ghost town now. I don’t want that to happen to FarmVille.”

To understand the scope of destruction wrought by an 11.9 quake, we asked Dr. Cracky McShake, a seismologist from Detroit University Online, to explain.

“The Richter scale is really dumb,” he says. “Each decimal point higher is, like, a gajillion times worse than the one before. What use is that? It’s like getting paid ten bucks an hour, and your first raise is to a hundred bucks an hour. Then a thousand. How the hell are you supposed to work out your tax bracket?”

But what does that mean for the survivors of the FarmVille quake?

“Survivors?” McShake says with a laugh. “There aren’t any survivors. Do you have any idea what an eleven point nine quake is like? It’s like a house of cards getting hit by a hurricane. It’s like a model train village getting obliterated by a cluster bomb. It’s like your wife and kids disappointing you so very very badly that you have to chop them up with an axe and put their remains through a wood chipper, and then throw those remains into a bonfire. Then you move to Utah or Nebraska or somewhere and change your identity. Eventually you get some bogus position at a fake online university. But that doesn’t stop the voices. The voices that order you to kill and kill again and go on killing until the voices stop.”

He went on to say, “It’s like that.”

Scientists disagree on what caused today’s FarmVille quake. A few fringe members of the scientific community claim it was caused two adjacent tectonic plates slipping or pushing against each other. But most mainstream seismologists and geologists believe it was the result of an angry god punishing us.

Several deities have already claimed responsibility. God, CEO of the popular faith, Christianity, said through his spokesperson, Pat Robertson, “This is what all those people get for being heathens and engaging in bestiality and not voting Republican.”

No so fast, says the Norse god, Thor.

“Thor angry. Thor use hammer,” the son of Odin told The Anvil. “I say, ‘It’s hammer time’ and FarmVille crumbles.”

He added, “Can’t touch this.”

When reached at his home on Mount Olympus, Zeus, the king of the gods, said, “Of course I destroyed FarmVille. Probably. I’ve destroyed so many civilizations I don’t even know I’m doing it anymore.”

When informed that other deities were also claiming credit, the philandering overlord added, “Other gods? Look, I was God before god as a word. Don’t make me burn down another giant Jesus statue.”

The Pentagon's new AngelKiller 7000 attack helicopter. "We'll do what we must," says General Petraeus.

DETROIT, MI – Until 1970, scientists believed thunder was the sound of shock waves caused by the rapid expansion of superheated air following a lightning strike. That’s when Detroit University Online geophysicist Cracky McShake put forth the controversial theory that thunder was actually the sound of angels bowling. He was later proven right and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Science.

Now, 40 years later, Professor McShake is making headlines again. In this month’s issue of Seismology Today, the septuagenarian is claiming that earthquakes are caused by those same angels throwing gutter balls.

“It’s simple,” says McShake. “Clouds are the lanes, those balls weigh fifty thousand tons each, and we’re the gutter. Not to sound overly technical, but when that ball impacts the planet’s surface, everything gets all vibratey and fally, and people run around going ‘AHHHHHH!!!’ Otherwise known as an earthquake.”

Though Dr. McShake’s theory prevails throughout much of the scientific world, not everyone agrees.

“Can anyone explain to me the absence of ball fragments?” asks geologist Gyro Spanakopita of Athens University in Greece. Spanakopita has visited the site of several recent quakes and has yet to find such fragments or, perhaps even more telling, evidence of impact craters.

Dr. McShake responded by saying, “We can’t think of angel balls as actual balls. They’re metaphysical balls. When you’re dealing with science, you just have to have faith.”

Televangelist Pat Robertson was quick to seize the Professor’s findings and put his own spin on them.

“Have you noticed that earthquakes usually strike in places where incorrect religions are practiced?” Robertson asked viewers of his show, The 700 Club, last night. “Where the professor and I differ is that I believe the angels are throwing those balls on purpose and saying, ‘F**k you, you heathen scum.’”

He later added, “Now let us pray.”

While McShake doesn’t openly dispute Robertson’s words, he did distance himself from the notion of wrathful judgment.

“I think what we need to do is find out why angels are so goddamned bad at bowling,” he said.

A small number of scientists, mostly weirdoes from community colleges and science-fiction films, have suggested the Earth goes through geologic cycles on a scale too broad for laymen to comprehend, hence the appearance of a looming Armageddon every time seismic activity spikes. They also point out that human population has more than doubled in the past century. As a result, a heavier concentration of people living along fault lines engenders a higher risk of structural damage and casualties when a quake does strike.

Those scientists are most likely misinformed idiots worshiping at the false idol of reason, say Internet posters.

McShake believes the best way humans can protect themselves is if all the world’s children write messages of peace to the angels (requesting that they, perhaps, take up billiards instead), attach them to helium balloons, and release them.

“But make sure you’re polite,” he warns kids, “or you might not wake up the next morning.”

Satan, former overlord of Hell but now unemployed, was quoted as telling mankind, “With friends like these, who needs me?”